Suburbs Make Pitch For Transit System

Addison Tell Their Goals

Schaumburg officials spoke of big shopping malls, towering office buildings and hotel conferences with thousands of guests, all tied together with a Personal Rapid Transit or PRT system.

Addison officials, by way of comparison, emphasized such practical matters as getting Chicago residents to their factory jobs in that Du Page County suburb, and helping apartment dwellers in Villa Park get to the local K mart on North Avenue.

Such were the contrasting sales pitches delivered Thursday to a captive audience of Regional Transportation Authority board members and staffers, who borrowed a bus from the Pace suburban bus division to tour the proposed PRT routes in Schaumburg and Addison.

At least one RTA board member was swayed in Schaumburg`s favor.

``Schaumburg has a growing market, a large variety of people who could use this system-businesses, shoppers, hotel guests and possibly convention center visitors,`` Kathleen Parker said.

While Parker applauded Addison officials for their enthusiasm in seeking a PRT system to run from a Metra commuter rail station in Villa Park to the Addison Industrial Park, she added that the village ``doesn`t meet the criteria we really need to justify a PRT.``

``Addison should try to solve its problems by first going to Pace and asking for a bus,`` she said.

Other RTA board members refrained from making judgments, noting they`re still to visit Deerfield and Rosemont on Monday, and Naperville and Lisle on May 20. The RTA expects to narrow the field to perhaps three contenders this summer, and to choose one community for the test site in 1992.

``Our regional center is the largest center of economic development in Illinois outside the City of Chicago,`` Schaumburg Village President Al Larson told RTA officials.

Noting that Schaumburg contains more retailing than any other community in Illinois except Chicago, and as much office space as downtown Milwaukee, Larson said, ``This is the very heart of the Golden Corridor.``

Representatives of the Greater Woodfield Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Northwest Suburban Association of Commerce and Industry also pitched RTA officials.

The PRT, a radical solution to traffic congestion, would try to lure suburbanites out of their autos and into small, automated podcars that would zip along elevated guideways to connect offices, shopping, hotels, factories and residences.

The 2.25-mile Schaumburg line would stop at Woodfield Mall, the Hyatt Regency Woodfield hotel, nearby office towers, and a proposed convention center and Pace transportation center.

A future extension could run south to serve the new 1 Schaumburg Place shopping center, to open this fall, and office towers and the Marriott hotel south of Higgins Road.

Thomas Dabareiner, Schaumburg transportation planner, said that in promising 20,000 workers, 1,200 hotel rooms and conference facilities for 2,600 along the first and second phases of the PRT, the village is ``the only commmunity that can provide these kinds of numbers for the PRT.``

The system also could cut down on ``trip chaining,`` or office workers using their cars to run errands, potentially reducing afternoon rush-hour congestion around Woodfield by a third, Dabareiner said.

Addison`s proposed PRT route would run for 2.1 miles and serve the village`s predominantly blue-collar work force, following existing streets and an abandoned railroad right of way north from the Villa Park Metra station.

The line would pass through a neighborhood of apartment buildings in Villa Park and a shopping district along North Avenue on its way to an older industrial section north of North Avenue and west of Addison Road in Addison.